In a dense residential neighborhood in Fujieda, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan, mA-Style Architects decided to keep the focus tight. Rather than designing a home that offered expansive views of neighboring city houses, the architects created a vista close to home for the Green Edge House.
The architects designed floating exterior walls to block the view of the surrounding neighborhood and serve as a backdrop for a rock garden that surrounds the house.
Every room inside the one-story house can be opened onto the greenery that lies between the glazed interior walls and the floating exterior walls. By designing a green space to run around the edge of the house, instead of by installing an interior courtyard, the architects were able to maintain some of the interior privacy lost with traditional courtyard designs.
(See The Cult of the Courtyard for ten homes that bring the outdoors in.)
Photographs by Nacasa and Partners, Inc.
Above: Seen from the outside, the exterior wall floats above the ground, bringing light into the home from below.
Above: Slender trees fits between the exterior white wall and the glazed glass walls of the interior structure.
Above: From the inside, looking out, the white exterior walls create a gallery-like space to showcase the plantings that encircle the house.
Above: Across the expanse of birch flooring, the home's garden flanks both sides of a central room.
Above: Glass doors allow access to the perimeter garden.
Above: The view from the street.
For more from mA-style Architects see A Home Inspired by An Ant Colony (Seriously).